Chapter 8
Sakura carried her new resolution with her in the tracking tasks Kakashi set them. This was her chance, Haruno Sakura, on her first (kind of) mission as an elite of the elite.
Believe it! She punched a fist into the air.
"Find something?" Sasuke asked.
He looked over at her from where he was squatted besides a sickly bush.
"No, not yet, I was just thinking!" She hastily withdrew her arm, blushing heavily, motivation fizzling away with her embarrassment.
He let out a grunt and turned back to examine his target, sniffing dubiously at the buds of what should have already been flowers. Sakura couldn't help but smile at his frustrated pout.
Naruto pranced over as though summoned, "Hey, you guys having any luck?"
He had been playing on the nearby stream under the guise of "looking around."
Sakura merely shook her head, but Sasuke's long-suffering sigh captured her feelings perfectly.
After giving Koji a tongue-lashing, Kakashi had returned to his normal, unbearable mix of laconic and mildly malicious. The instructions he left them with in the mornings, when he abandoned them to pass the time carefully stalking the Suna team at a level far beyond their current skills, were a proof of that.
It was their fourth day trying to find the "surprise" Pakkun had hidden for them "not too far away. Probably." They had gone so far south that they had almost reached the coast, though, to Sakura's disappointment, the Suna team explored the southern coastline on their own in the morning, and Sakura missed the chance to see the sea for herself because of Pakkun's stupid game. Now they were inching closer to the Shinano as they crisscrossed their way northwards again throughout River – it was already Thursday, and they were to cross on Friday.
Kakashi had been clear that if they weren't successful before then he wouldn't have time to waste babysitting them when they were closer to Sand. But if they did find whatever Pakkun had hidden, if they were successful, then he would let them help him in his evaluations.
Sakura was going to be successful. No question – she had aced the academy's tracking unit. That kind of rote memorization came to her easily.
Unfortunately, Kakashi's only hint had been to "think like the puppies you are."
That didn't really give her a great sense of which part of the curriculum she should lean on.
Nevertheless, they managed to follow Pakkun's trail to a certain point, as always, after which it completely disappeared. No more paw prints, no more fur catching on tangles in the underbrush – absolutely nothing. By the time they had run an futile outward spiral search as a team and done three iterations of equally fruitless wheel searches, their time would have run out: noon meant they needed to stuff themselves with ration bars before meeting the Suna team to move on to a new site.
Sasuke had obviously become frustrated with their continued failures. This time, rather than following textbook search patterns to pick up a trail that they obviously weren't going to find, they were focusing on the place they'd lost it.
Pakkun's very last pawprint was before her feet, clearly set in the muddy ground besides the small stream he had followed. There was some sparse underbrush, which Sasuke had been closely examining for nearly an hour, but the horizon was flat, and visuals were good, except to the south, where uneven pillars of earth rose up in strange, jutting configurations that could only be the remains of massive earth jutsu.
The closer they got to the Shinano the more desolate the Land of Rivers became. Near the border, it had been something of a poorer, less populated and more watery version of the Fire settlements Sakura had spent the last months becoming familiar with.
The war had ended a decade ago, but it had left a harsh legacy on the small nation. Here, despite the proximity to the fertile river, civilian life was practically invisible. Houses were nothing but haphazard shacks built into the ground, dotting the horizon almost shyly, as though striving to go unnoticed. They hadn't seen something she could label an actual village in days. Even scavenging food and kindling from the locals had been becoming more difficult – at Naruto's whining they had ended up eating more of their rations instead of scavenging food from the only civvie home in their perimeter, though at least he didn't draw the line at taking wood for the fire.
More interesting was the ravaged landscape. Ghost towns of abandoned civilian settlements, long ago reconquered by nature, blended into the unusual earth patterns that marked the lasting effects of elemental manipulations. The many small water sources flowing off of the Shinano, Kamo, and other larger rivers were rerouted at strange angles for some logistical purposes that Sakura didn't bother trying to mentally recreate. The majority of the fighting had been nearer to the river, even at the war's worst, and then in Sand itself, but trenches were everywhere, running crisscross across even plains.
Columns of smoke rose from them still, where civilians had slowly began to populate the abandoned fortifications, and when Sakura looked at them, she felt that she could almost imagine herself there, on the battlefield of the Third War. It gave the landscape a sense of romance that leant greatly to her daydreams.
Now wasn't exactly the time for flights of fancy, but, still, she couldn't help but wonder.
"Hey, Naruto," she said, rocking back onto her heels to get comfortable. "You've been outside of Fire before, right? Is everywhere else like this?"
By this she meant a total shithole, but her mom wouldn't want her to put it like that.
Her hyper-awareness of Sasuke's every moment let her catch the nasty look he shot her, but it wasn't like they were getting anywhere with their search.
"Well, I dunno," Naruto was hesitant. "There's lots of nice towns in Fire, I've been to some of them. With buildings like in Konoha, y'know, not like here, and castles and stuff. For the nobles. And lots of people. Nothing as big as Konoha though. Outside of Fire we never really visited the towns. I mean, villages are kinda the same everywhere, right? Just some are bigger or have more food."
He looked thoughtfully at the earth pillars on the horizon.
"This place is really sad, though. We should've done something, so it didn't turn out this way, y'know?"
"Yeah, if we'd been able to annex at least up to the river, things would've been way better off," Sakura agreed easily.
It grated that a permanent presence wasn't allowed, even though River Country was their official client. If war broke out here all the fortifications would have to be completely rebuilt, and the civilians occupying them summarily relocated. Their current status wasn't really good for any sort of defense, as she was sure that the shinobi from Sand had taken note.
That said, the poverty of the lives of the locals was really oppressing. She understood why it was depressing Naruto.
"The people should've just moved to Fire," she said, thinking logically. "But I guess here they don't have to pay shinobi taxes. They probably don't get that in the end they'd have more if they moved."
"I guess…" Naruto said. "I don't really get all that stuff."
"It's a fallacy based on the initial costs. The immediate costs of moving and then the prospect of additional taxation scare them too much to think about the long-term benefits of protection and stability. There was never long-term fighting within Fire's borders in any of the wars, not even once. Plus, protection on a lower level, of course, missions and the like." Sakura explained.
"Aha, I totally get it, now! You're really smart, Sakura-chan!" Suddenly, Naruto had become all sunshine and smiles. His mood whiplash was sometimes as dramatic as Kakashi's. "Thanks for explaining to me."
"You think it's that much better for the ones on our side of the border?" Sasuke scoffed, tossing his head as he stood up to join their conversation.
Sakura shrugged. She really liked Sasuke, but she was noticing more and more the type of things that people whispered about other Uchiha, the ones that weren't related to Itachi-sama. She wished he wouldn't act like that.
"What would a dog do?" She asked, changing the subject without any particular grace. "The whole 'dog-pack searching style' totally isn't working."
"Yeah, it's definitely not just another fakeout to hammer in the 'teamwork' lesson, we've covered that," Sasuke said. "We have to get it today."
"They pee on trees a lot," Naruto suggested, not for the first time. "We could sniff all the trees until we find pee. There aren't that many trees around here."
"Maybe it's about puppies, specifically, not dogs," Not for the first time, Sasuke ignored Naruto's suggestion. It really was a specialty of his. Sakura remembered why she liked him so much now.
"It's got to be smell," she said. "I mean, puppies don't even open their eyes or ears for weeks. Their hearing isn't great, either. And I'm definitely not licking any trees until I taste pee."
"I didn't say that!" Naruto squawked. "Hey, hey, I said smell, too! I totally did, from the beginning!"
"It still doesn't make sense, though!" Sasuke snarled. "We eliminated that for a reason. He can't really expect us to teach ourselves how to enhance our senses enough to find a scent trail."
"Well, Inuzuka do it, right?" She wasn't sure; that kind of clan business wasn't really broadcast. "Or do their dogs do it for them…?"
Sasuke didn't answer, which meant he obviously wasn't sure either.
Sakura had never had a dog. Or pet of any kind. That was a pretty frivolous thing only nobles did. Unless you were on a farm or something.
"Dogs dig, sometimes. I mean, I've seen some dogs do that," Naruto suggested. "I don't know about puppies. But maybe it's a scroll or something, underground? With some secret techniques on it? Kakashi-sensei told me he was gonna show me some wind techniques soon! I bet that's it! I'm gonna get it first, believe it!"
He threw himself at the ground in front of Sakura, clawing with bare hands at the ground under Pakkun's last paw print. She took a revulsed step back, leaving him space for increasingly frantic movements. A spray of mud shot out behind him to splatter Sasuke, but before it could connect Sasuke had substituted away, landing on the stream out of range of the danger.
"Seriously, Naruto…!" With difficulty, Sakura repressed the urge to sock him in the face. Only the thought of the imminent demise that would surely follow could restrain her. Instead, she had to content herself with a few seconds of spluttering.
"Ugh, you really need a full-time babysitter," She said, wrinkling her nose.
Naruto also was capable of selective deafness, it seemed, because he ignored her with gusto. He ripped up roots with wild abandon, slowly widening the hole opening up beneath him.
"Sakura," Sasuke said, appearing beside her. His eyes were riveted on Naruto. "Puppies stick near their mothers."
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Finding Kakashi was easier said than done.
First they had to return to the campsite, which went much faster when not tracing after Pakkun's winding trail, but still took a fair amount of time. Then they had to start out again with a whole new set of parameters: they knew the general location of the Suna camp from the night before, and logically there were only a limited number of sectors the shinobi would be interesting in examining today – Sasuke already had them all marked on their map from the previous night's strategy session.
But, above all, they needed to make contact with Kakashi at a time near enough to noon to be acceptable if the Suna team noticed them. Preferably, they would avoid detection at all, of course, but with a wary jounin on the lookout, that was probably impossible. If Kakashi was actively evading the jounin's senses, the situation was even worse – how could they fish him out if Baki couldn't?
Ultimately, they decided to haunt the location they were supposed to meet the Suna team at noon, taking into account the direction they were most likely to be coming from (three possible sectors, zone search with security emphasis) and sweeping to rendezvous with Kakashi before the time limit. He probably wouldn't count it if they just waited a little early at the rendezvous point itself. Punctuality didn't mean much to him.
Sasuke was confident that Kakashi would reveal himself when they proved they'd figured out his "retarded mind games."
Naruto agreed that it was "typical for that one-eyed bastard!", so that was that. En route they were, Formation 2.
Naruto had thrown himself into the new plan with even more enthusiasm than he had dedicated to his beloved three-foot hole in the ground.
He was probably just looking forward to the chance to harass Gaara. Naruto's increasingly horrifying attempts to befriend the clearly unstable boy were actually proving somewhat beneficially to Sakura as well, so she didn't want to complain too much. Gaara's team seemed to have calmed him enough that he hadn't threatened murder since that first day, and Sakura felt as though she and Sasuke were bonding in their attempts to prevent Naruto's worst thoughts from leaving his lips (Sasuke was excellent at elbow-jabs, and not afraid of Naruto in the least, but Sakura's finely-tuned stare-at-boys-discretely skills made her better at noticing when he was about to burst out with something particularly awful). When she realized they had reached a stage of shared conspiratorial eye-rolling, it made her blush to the very toes.
It was basically the secret love language that Ino had always bragged that only Yamanaka could really understand.
Still, Naruto's behavior confused her. Though she and Sasuke had both given up on Naruto's "diplomacy" kick after the second day, she could understand why he was looking so hard to foreigners for friendship. But, Gaara…
"Why do you care so much, anyway?" She asked.
Both Sasuke and Naruto turned with questioning hand signs flashing for her to repeat.
"Sorry, Sasuke-kun," She clarified. "I meant, Naruto, why are you trying so hard to win that psycho over? I know Kakashi-sensei said it was okay. But. Temari seems normal. I guess snobby, and pretty quiet. Kankuro is really vulgar. But, still, if you want to make friends with someone that doesn't know what you are, sorry, I mean – they're probably easier to reach out to. They can't throw that sand at you, at least, they're missing the gourds, so that's definitely only his bloodline."
Naruto didn't answer immediately. She wondered if she'd offended him with her straightforwardness.
She couldn't help but fiddling with her forehead protector as she focused back on the route ahead of them.
"I want him to know I understand," Naruto said finally, unusually softly. "That guy… he's just like me. And I understand."
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.
Sasuke was mostly right. One of Kakashi's dogs stopped them to wait for Kakashi, warning them that if they went any further the Suna team might notice them. But Sasuke was still partly wrong: after an appropriately long wait for his arrival, Kakashi revealed that the secret task hadn't been to find him, but to rely on him.
"The bitch hunts for the young," he said. Then, wailing dramatically, and throwing his hands into the air: "But you didn't even ask for instructions! How could I tell you where Pakkun's secret scroll was if you wouldn't even ask how to find it?"
Sakura thought this was the exact opposite of everything he had taught them up to then.
As always, Naruto was the only one to voice that level of rudeness, aggressively pointing at Kakashi.
"Sensei, you bastard! We wasted three whole days! We were gonna sniff the trees for dog piss!"
"That was never going to happen, Kakashi-sensei!" Sakura corrected immediately, stretching out her hands in a gesture of denial.
She heard the satisfying whump of Sasuke elbowing Naruto in the gut. She hoped it hurt.
"But, still, I guess I can count it…" Kakashi mumbled, as though talking to himself, but obviously loud enough for them all to hear. "Alright, kiddies, you've won a prize. Next week, I'll show you how I would've tracked Pakkun. Though, I just summoned him to me after an hour, so it's not as though you guys had a chance."
Sakura's fists clenched involuntarily as she stifled her rage.
"Still," Kakashi continued. "I hope you brushed up your tracking skills. You'll need them starting tomorrow. Congratulations, you've earned the right to follow me around.
"Now let's go play with our frustrated guests."
It was a good way to describe their interactions.
They moved west with the Suna team, accompanied as before by four of Kakashi's dogs. As always, the Suna shinobi were visibly alert to their surroundings, and Baki continued his semi-periodic calls for stops to take notes.
Naruto made increasingly awkward attempts to engage Gaara in conversation. He started, as usual, with invasive questions about the day's work that Gaara would have been obliged not to answer even if he wanted to be Naruto's friend. The one-sided interrogation easily segued into a monologue about the kindness, open-mindedness, and selflessness of Naruto's favorite civilian, an old man who was the owner of some ramen shop. When that started to lead him down the road to reminiscing about the Academy – Sakura could tell because of the mention of Iruka-sensei, and shot Sasuke a meaningful look – Sasuke put a quick end to Naruto's chatter with a vicious step on the foot.
"Holy shit, blessed silence," Kankuro moaned, but Naruto was undaunted.
"Anyway, Gaara. I was thinking, that it's people like Old Man Teuchi that really matter, y'know? I mean, just one person can make up for everyone else, can't they? You just have to find your person, so that you can find the strength to keep moving forward, you know what I mean? And then you're not lonely anymore. And you don't have to be lonely ever again – because there's one person who will never forget you.
"You probably have someone like that too. I guess, the Kazekage is your dad, right? I always wished I had – "
"Are you threatening me?" Gaara interrupted. His voice was wild, and he came to a sudden stop, bringing their whole group to a halt.
"What? No, I – "
"My father has been trying to kill me for years." Gaara continued.
They stood in tension. Sakura had the sudden realization that if a fight broke out right now it would mean a war. Naruto seemed to realize that too, and he made an abortive motion with his hands, before settling down at the way Gaara's gaze tracked his motions.
"No, I didn't mean that, then, just, I meant, a person who is precious to you is what can make it okay. " Naruto tried.
"There was one person like that, the way you said," Gaara reached a hand up to cling at the blood red kanji for love tattooed on his face. He stared at Naruto through his fingers with a deranged smile.
"He failed to kill me as well. None of them will succeed."
A strand of sand twisted out from his gourd and into the air. The tension was so thick a knife could cut it.
"Let's go find a village, Gaara," Temari suggested in a murmur, barely audible. "You remember the mission. These people don't matter – let's go find a village."
He turned and stalked away from the group, headed in a different direction than they had been moving. Temari followed. Kakashi made no move to stop them.
The silence continued until the two of them disappeared from sight. One of Kakashi's dogs split from Naruto's side to follow them.
"You have no objections, of course," Kakashi said, nodding at Baki.
Baki agreed.
Kankuro let out a low whistle. "Damn, you Konoha are crazy."
"I apologize for the inconvenience," Baki said stiffly.
"Nah, it's alright," Kakashi's tone was firm, and his hands dug into Naruto's shoulders. He gave the boy something of a shake. "It won't happen again."
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.
"So, what happened today, kiddies?" Kakashi asked when they were all crouched around their campfire. They had quickly found a suitable spot to make camp near the banks of the Shinano after Gaara and Temari had rejoined their group.
"Kakashi-sensei, things went way too far today, right?" Sakura said.
Naruto sunk down in his place.
"But you two were for the idea in the first place, weren't you?" Kakashi asked. Sakura thought of that first night around the campfire, with Koji.
She didn't know what to say.
"That's not the point, Kakashi-sensei!" Naruto said. "It's just because I can only talk to him. If I could just show him, I know I could make him understand! I just need the chance to show him!"
"And what do your teammates think of that?" Kakashi poked at the fire with a stick, sending sparks flying into the air. His full attention was on the flames, his tone completely uninterested.
"Tch," Sasuke grunted. "You need to cut it out, Naruto."
"Yeah, Sasuke-kun's right," Sakura agreed. "If he's like you… Naruto, you should stop, maybe. I mean, if you get him angry."
"You guys don't get it!" Naruto let out an actual growl, and Sakura couldn't help but shudder. "You just don't get it! He's just like me! He's always been alone! It's even worse, because he doesn't have Old Man Teuchi, or Iruka-sensei, or – I dunno. Everyone always looks at him like that, with those eyes, like he's a monster. Everyone's afraid he's just going to explode and kill them all without even knowing, but he's not, he's not. It's not like that! And they look at him like that, but then they probably make him use it. He would never use it if they didn't make him! He's not a monster, they're the ones that make him act like one. But I can show him, I can make him see – it doesn't have to be like that, right? Someone can see through it, can see him, Gaara, not – not anything else. I'm gonna do it, so you better believe it!"
He paused to pant for breath after his passionate declaration, hand raised to the sky in challenge.
Oh, Sakura thought. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, Naruto, I –
"Naruto." Kakashi said. "Don't talk to him anymore."
He stood, looking down at them one by one, his gaze hard.
"Get some rest tonight. We have a big day ahead of us and we'll have a lot of work on the other side of the river. We meet with Baki's team at sunrise."
The next morning they forded the Shinano.